DUE SOUTH

The allure of the Island

WORDS BY RONDA RICH | PHOTO BY TERESA JONES

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When I was a child growing up on Rural Route One, my favorite games requiring imagination and a peek into adulthood was to play “house.”

Countless hours were spent with my green Suzy Homemaker “working” oven (it baked cakes with a hot lightbulb) and refrigerator. Santa brought a small, off-white buffet with Queen Anne legs, functioning doors and drawers trimmed in gold and replete with silver (plastic) serving pieces and candlesticks.

One Friday night, while watching television’s Gomer Pyle, I burned my chocolate layer cake. Just as distractions get the best of us as grown cooks, when a long phone call causes us to burn the biscuits, I was caught up in an argument between Gomer and his girlfriend, LuAnn.

Even though they were plastic and not real, the pieces were still fancier, to a five-year-old child, than the mountain plainness of our kitchen. We had no buffet — we dipped our plates up from the stove or passed bowls at the kitchen table — and our range was plain with electric eyes. The fridge was so awful that it was often an embarrassment to me because it was old, small, and stout. It’s now called vintage and I’m crazy about it.

Not then, though.

If I was outside, playing house, I plopped down in the sand box that Daddy built for me. There was no box. Only a truck bed of sand dumped under two Georgia pines — one tree had a vintage 1940 hooded light with a string long enough for me to reach. If my playing lasted too long into the dusky evenings, I’d jump up, reach high, and pull the light on.

Someone, who was friends with a worker we’d hired, stole that light a few years ago. Fortunately, I still had another that matched it, which we hung at the barn.

Back then, though, for hours on end, I made mud pies and decorated them with either fresh blackberries from a nearby bush or green or red holly berries from another bush.

Making a home has been important to me since I was old enough to run and trip among the twigs and leaves of my childhood.

We have the Rondarosa, which includes my childhood home and the few grains of sand that are left of that sandbox. But sometimes, our hearts yearn for a second home that will take us away from the worry or chaos of the first home or, in both mine and Tink’s case, that offers us a quiet respite to write and create — our chosen vocations in life.

It will not surprise you that it was the Georgia islands, specifically St. Simons, that called to me. A lovely, calming place that, for over two decades, has danced around me alluringly and whispered like a siren from a Homer epic, “Come to me. I am home, too.”

This is true. St. Simons is, to me, what writers and artists call “my muse.” She inspires me. Once, I spent seven days, split between Sea Island and St. Simons, and I wrote nine columns in that week. I usually take a month to write that many. That is how powerful the Golden Isles are.

Tink and I talk often of buying a second place there or renting one, but the right one — IT — had never presented itself. A few weeks ago at midnight, IT appeared on a real estate listing. A charming 1945 cottage that had been

restored and situated herself in a beautiful green spot that teasingly welcomed us and our two dogs.

I wasted no time. By eight the next morning, the call was made. By noon, the offer was made. By 1 p.m., we were told that we had lost it by minutes.

I cried.

Please know this: I rarely cry over material possessions. Daddy taught me that. He said, “Cry only over what money and hard work can’t replace.”

St. Simons, though, is a siren like no other to me. I had asked God to close the door if it wasn’t right and, believing my earnestness, He did. Still, it was hard to accept.

I liken it to the time that Daddy was trying to die. He had spent two years trying to get to Jesus but our doctors and my family interfered. Finally, we saw the light and prayed for his sake, not ours, that he would earn his glorified body and leave behind his worn-out one.

God answered those prayers by the full moon of a November night.

I cried.

Shed tears are often cried as much over answered prayers as unanswered ones.

Perhaps 2022 will be different and the good Lord will bring us the right spot on St. Simons.

And if He doesn’t, here’s full disclosure: I may cry again.

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